Music: Brilliant Britten

The opening of Benjamin Britten's latest opera, Death in Venice, poses
the question of why no composer has previously tried to set Thomas
Mann's writings to music. One reason may be that his themes were often
heavily bourgeois. On the other hand, Mann's tales were frequently
structured like musical compositionsranging from the symphonic
patterns of The Magic Mountain to the leitmotivs of Death in Venice,
which would seem to be eminently transformable into opera. Britten has
done just that, and the result is brilliant.

As the centerpiece of the current Aldeburgh Festival, Britten's Death...